


Only Size Five

by cgf_kat, hailqiqi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Healing, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17569850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailqiqi/pseuds/hailqiqi
Summary: “Katie…”Shiro doesn’t mean for it to come out like that. His knees hit the deck and it sounds like a sob as he reaches to ease her helmet off. Her cheeks are already damp, and small fingers grasp weakly at his arm.“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please hang on...”Shiro rips his own helmet off, reaching behind him to reopen a comm channel. Questions are already flooding the airwaves; voices he has to shout over. “I need help! Allura! Pidge is—Pidge is down!”***The long trip home to Earth is dangerous, and in a war, lives are lost.A fic collab written experiment/character study exploring the idea of what might happen if Pidge died, and how the team would handle it. We love her…so we had to kill her.





	Only Size Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there will probably be some back and forth as to who’s fault this actually is but I’m blaming @hailqiqi and…okay it’s my fault too, but ANYWAY. XD
> 
> This is the first chapter of a round-robin fic collab between the two of us that we’re doing as something of an experiment/character study, etc. In one of the servers we’re in we were discussing the idea of what might happen if Pidge died, and how the team would handle it. We love her…so we had to kill her. 
> 
> Right now the plan is to take turns writing six chapters, one from the POV of each other main character. Welp, here goes nothing.

Pidge cries out when the green lion does. A roar that sounds like nothing so much as pain echoes through the lion as it shakes, throwing Shiro into the side of the pilot’s seat. 

“What happened!” he questions.

“We’re hit!” Her eyes are wide as she twists in her seat, casting a glance over her shoulder as if she knows what’s back there. “The cargo hold! We’re being boarded!”

Shiro doesn't ask if she’s sure. He knows what it’s like, to have that connection with a lion. To feel what it feels and know its’ thoughts. But there’s no time to dwell on how he misses it as he spins on his heel to make for the door. 

There’s been so much to adjust to, being alive again. But at least he still has the others. 

More or less. 

He can’t feel the others the way he used to, either. The paladin bond isn’t gone like his connection to the black lion, but since Allura put him in this body...it’s like a frayed thread at the edge of his mind. He knows they’re all there, but usually that’s the most he can feel. Sometimes, in a way, it aches. 

“Wait!” Pidge calls. “Take this.” Something glints green and black through the air; he catches it on instinct. Her bayard. “If Lotor could use yours, you can use mine, right?”

Shiro doesn’t even know if that’s true. “Pidge, you could need—”

But the bayard in his hand is reacting, forming a blade that glows as her scimitar does. Made only of energy, not adding any weight to the one arm he still has, it doesn’t make the balance difference he’s been learning to live with any worse. It occurs to him that’s likely purposeful on its’ part. 

He wonders if it would still shock things. That might be useful if it would. 

Pidge laughs once, as if in triumph that she was right. “You don’t have another weapon! I’m flying.” She flashes a grin at him. “Watch my back.”

Shiro can’t help grinning in return; her energy is contagious, and a warm pride swells in his chest with it. Just moments ago she was throwing him anxious looks when the ship hidden in the asteroid belt revealed itself. 

“Pirates?” Lance was asking.

Hunk groaned. “Again?”

Pidge wasn’t adding to the radio chatter as she split with the others into a battle formation, and he knew what the tense set of her shoulders meant. He wished he could feel more—that he could give her more—but he squeezed her shoulder and it seemed to be enough. 

“It’s not the same ship; it’s not them,” he told her. She relaxed—she seemed determined not to let her anxiety affect the fight—and look at her now.

She calls over the comms to the others as Shiro makes his way down to the cargo hold.

“Everybody avoid the tiny pointy ships!”

“Pidge, that’s ALL of them!” Lance protests. 

“Not the fighters; the smaller things the main ship is dropping! They’re manned breach pods. We’ve got company here.”

Shiro doesn't have to go far to find the pirate. Huge and blue, he’s waiting just inside the cargo hold, looking as if he was trying to determine which door led to the pilot. Their blades meet, and Shiro doesn’t see much more of the pod than a glimpse of dull silver and a strange purple-ish goo it seems to have deployed around its’ breach point to seal the atmosphere in here. 

Taking the towering alien down isn’t as easy as it used to be. Not with the changed weight distribution he’s still learning. Not having the extra weight of a real blade does help, but it’s touch and go for a moment and the blade he has does not, sadly, appear to shock things. 

Still the pirate ends up down and out. No trouble to anyone anymore. 

But the second one flashing by him might be. 

“Quiznak,” Shiro huffs. The second one hid until he was distracted. He could have taken them both on if he’d known they were both there, but this one took advantage of the situation. 

Shiro darts after the retreating form, up through the ramp in the green lion’s neck, his heart pounding in his throat because he can’t let this one get to Pidge. He won’t. 

His blade catches the alien’s staff just before it can come down on her head. 

“Couldn’t keep the fighting down below?” she teases without looking around.

“One of them hid!”

“Excuses,” she laughs. 

Shiro plants his feet and braces against her seat as Pidge angles up sharply, throwing the unsuspecting pirate backward. After that, Shiro has the upper hand.

He thinks. 

He isn’t prepared for the strange smirk the pirate gives him when they lock each other into a stalemate moments later, blade to staff. His less-than-usually-steller balance isn’t prepared to compensate when the pirate shifts his weight until the end of the staff rams the back of the pilot’s chair. 

Shiro isn’t prepared for anything more than the startled bark from Pidge. He isn’t prepared when the pirate’s thumb moves just enough to hit a switch he didn’t notice before…or for the abrupt sound and glow of a cutting beam activating from the end of the staff.

“Shir…!”

Pidge is in the middle of calling his name in irritation for the jostling, but she never gets it out. She cuts off in a gargled gasp instead.

Shiro isn’t prepared. 

He isn’t. 

How could he be?

“NO...!”

Later he doesn’t remember how the second pirate went down. He only remembers the sharp clatter of the bayard on the floor of the cockpit that breaks through the red and white haze of rage and panic - the rush to get to Pidge. 

Shallow, pained gasps and a flash of agony strong enough to make it through the weak thread in his mind tell him she’s still alive as he swings himself around the side of the pilot’s seat, but he doesn’t know what he’ll find there.  

“Pidge! Pidge…?” 

Panicked honey eyes find his; trying to hold them, trying to make sure she knows he’s there, is almost enough to keep Shiro from seeing the practically cauterized hole in her chest. 

If it were bigger and not singed that way, she would already be dead. 

“Katie…” 

He doesn’t mean for it to come out like that. His knees hit the deck and it sounds like a sob as he reaches to ease her helmet off. Something shifts in her eyes and he’s sure she knows. Her cheeks are already damp, and small fingers grasp weakly at his arm. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please hang on...”

His fault. His. He didn’t protect her.

Shiro rips his own helmet off, reaching behind him to reopen a comm channel. Questions are already flooding the airwaves; voices he has to shout over. “I need help! Allura! Pidge is—Pidge is down!”

She saved him; she can save Pidge, right? 

...Right?

“Down?” Lance barks. 

“Wh-what do you mean down? What happened?” Hunk stammers over the air. 

Shiro doesn’t have time to answer; something strikes the green lion, sending them spinning until he grabs at the sticks one at a time to straighten them out behind the cover of an asteroid they nearly hit. Beyond it, the pirates’ fighters are thinning.

“Shiro!”

“Pidge?”

“Are you all right!”

The others are calling for them.

“Hang on, Shiro!” Keith is saying. “We’ll have this ship disabled in a dobosh or two.”

Shiro turns back to Pidge to hold the hand she’s been reaching with, squeezing her fingers with as much reassurance as he can convey. But her eyelids are fluttering. “Sh..Shir...o..”

His voice breaks. “We don’t have that long!”

There are more voices then, even as the brightness of explosions from the battlefield bursts from beyond the asteroid, but Allura’s voice breaks through them, clear and short. “Understood.”

Shiro leans closer to Pidge, calling her name and freeing his hand to rest it against her cheek until she focuses on him again. 

“Pidge, look at me! Help is coming. Come on…”

It’s getting harder to see. How long has his face been damp, too? 

No. No time for that. Allura is coming. Allura can help.

So tired. Her eyes are so tired when they focus on him again. Hazy. “My..m..family…”

He won’t argue with her now. It isn’t worth it, and he knows what she’s asking. Find Matt again. Tell her family she loves them. Tell them everything she did out here. All of that, and more, and he won’t have to do it, he won’t because she’s going to live, but he nods anyway. Because he would if he needed to and she needs to know that.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He failed. Even if Allura can fix this, he still failed.

A small shake of her head.  _ You didn’t _ , she’s trying to say. 

But he did. 

He can feel her scrabbling at the bond. Trying to hold on. Wanting to know she isn’t alone and slipping on the weak thread that none of them have talked about since he came back. 

They haven’t talked about the fact that he doesn’t have a connection to Black anymore. They haven't talked about this, either. Maybe it hurts too much to know how things have changed. As Pidge clings to what’s left of it he can feel, for the first time, in a while, more. For a moment he can feel regret...that they didn’t talk more, maybe. That the bond isn’t strong enough for her to convey more than that. 

“I know,” he says aloud. “I know, I’m sorry.” His thumb brushes across her cheek, wiping away tears. “Please hang on...we’ll talk more when you’re okay. You have to hang on.”

Shiro swallows as her eyebrows go up and her lips part again. Her short breaths are coming fewer and farther between and something in him relaxes when a bright blue-white flash from beyond the chair tells him someone is here. 

Pidge licks her lips, but there’s no moisture to do it with. Her lips crack as she tries to give him that smile. “Shiro...was...was I great?”

It’s no more than a breath. A whisper. But it sends him back to the jungle where they found the green lion.  _ Go. Be great _ , he told her.

Shiro smiles at that with a rush of air, because that he can answer. “Yeah, Pidge. You are.”

Allura is there, asking him to move back, and as she tries Shiro shifts back against a console and holds a breath. But she stops too soon, the blue light from her hands fading where they rest against Pidge’s cheeks. 

“Allura…?” Shiro asks. 

Her hands hover in the air above Pidge’s face, frozen as if she doesn’t want to pull away. As if, if she does, that will mean it’s really over.

“I can’t recreate the vaporized tissue,” she whispers.

It makes sense, but he wishes it didn’t. Shiro’s gut rebels, wrenching around inside him so painfully his breath comes out in a gasp, but the way Pidge is looking at them...her eyes are barely open, but something in them is trying to tell them it’s all right.

But it isn’t.

It’s not all right. 

Pidge finds his fingers again as her other hand strains up to wrap around Allura’s, to squeeze with what strength she has left. Shiro squeezes back and kisses her forehead, but it still isn’t all right. 

Allura is crying silently, apologizing. He opens his mouth to tell her isn’t her fault. It isn’t. It’s his. But nothing comes out, and he doesn’t have another arm to put around her. 

He doesn’t have that, and he can’t help through the bond. He can scarcely feel Allura at all; she wasn’t a paladin when he was. He can only feel her presence, tenuously, through the others. 

And Pidge’s presence is weakening. The green strand in the thread is going dim. 

Keith’s wolf reappears more than once, bringing the others here the only quick way they have because there is nowhere to land. Shiro staggers to his feet and draws away to give the others space, head aching with the collected bursts of shock and sorrow, and maybe a part of him should be glad that what’s left of the bond seems to be strengthening, but right now it only hurts. 

Everything hurts.

“Pidge…? Pidge! Pidge!” Lance, leaning over her, grasping at one of her hands, too loud, desperate and sobbing. “No no no, Pidge, come on, please. Pidge…!” Hunk at his elbow, leaning into Pidge’s side, face buried in her hair, and Shiro doesn’t know if he’s speaking to her or just crying into it, but it isn’t for him to know. 

Pidge can hear them. He can feel the pulse of warmth along the bond. It’s a small relief with the pain that nearly blinds him.

He doesn’t know how long it is, after that. It seems like forever and no time at all. Maybe Keith is there beside him, for some of it, but he isn’t sure. He doesn't remember drawing closer to the chair again but they’re all there, when it’s over. For her. 

Shiro can feel it, when Pidge is gone. The green strand snaps and...he knows.

They all know. It’s like a piece of them is suddenly...missing. Like everything is suddenly too quiet, even though the green lion’s cockpit was far too quiet already. A weak sob breaks from his chest as the lights flicker, and he isn’t the only one. They wait for the power to go out—for Green to go silent—but it doesn’t happen. The lights dim, but they don’t die.

The others seem just as confused, but no one is ready to ask questions yet. 

None of them are ready for much at all. Not yet. The pirate ship is disabled, limping away with what’s left of its’ pride, and with no danger...it doesn’t matter. 

“This...this wasn’t supposed to happen,” Lance says, into the silence. It’s barely more than a broken whisper but it feels like a gunshot. Hunk is collapsed beside him, Allura clinging to Coran. Romelle looks lost. Keith is looking at the floor, Krolia angled closely beside him as if she could protect him from what’s happened. 

Shiro takes a sharp breath. Some of them look at him, but he doesn’t have an answer. Keith is close enough to reach for him, but the hand on his shoulder doesn’t help. 

He hears himself mumbling something about taking a look at the pierced hull in the cargo bay, and gives Keith something like a apologetic glance as he retreats. 

***

“We uh...we moved her to the stasis pod. So we can bring her home.” 

Keith finds him in the depths of the cargo bay, later, against the wall behind a stack of crates and not even pretending to poke at the breach pod anymore.

How long has he been down here?

Shiro clears his throat. “That’s uh...that’s good.” He goes to get up, but Keith sits. 

“I can tow Green, but Hunk wanted to take the pod,” he continues quietly.

Silence, for a moment or two. 

“It isn’t your fault,” Keith says. 

Shiro pushes out a heavy breath. “You weren’t there, Keith.”

“I know you did everything you could.”

His eyes close. He can’t take Keith looking at him like that right now. Like...like he couldn't have done anything wrong. “And Pidge is still…” He can’t finish the sentence. “I...I should have have been able to—” He has to stop to take another breath. 

“Shiro…no.”

He can’t answer that. He doesn’t know how, and he gets to his feet before Keith can try again. “Are we ready to move out?”

Shuffling beside him, as Keith climbs back up too. “Yeah…”

He can feel the disappointment and concern almost as well as he can hear it. Almost...almost as well as he once could feel it. Before he died. When the paladin bond was stronger. 

Something nudges at the edge of Shiro’s mind—something in the aching, empty place that the black lion left. 

“No,” he gasps, quietly. “No no no…”

_ No. What are you doing? I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I—  _

A hand on his shoulder and Keith is there, worried and calling his name, but Shiro is frozen.

The consciousness that reaches out to his is different than Black. Somehow softer and sharper all at once. 

And also grieving as he is, with a fine edge of guilt. 

_ You have nothing to feel that way for. You were always with her. You protected her. I failed. How could you want me to…? _

The answer doesn’t come in words; the lions’ voices never do. Pieces of his own memory, pulled to the forefront—how quickly he devoured information when he was young, even if part of it was knowing he might not have the time other people might; how much he yearned for the stars; the risks he was always willing to take. Pidge and her computers. Her risks. Her data.

_ You’re not so different _ , Green seems to be saying. 

_ But… _

His feet carry him up to the now-empty cockpit, as if being there will give him an answer to why any of this happened in the first place. It shouldn’t surprise him when the consoles light up around him, but his eyebrows still climb. 

It doesn’t make any sense. He tries to step back, but his boot catches something on the ground. 

Pidge’s bayard. The one she gave him. Not that either of them knew what it meant then. When he picks it up now, reluctantly, it glows green in his hand. 

“Shiro…” Keith is still behind him. Questioning eyes meet his. Shiro’s chest is tight, and if anyone can understand why he doesn’t want to do this, Keith would. 

_ I can’t take her place. I couldn’t even keep her safe. _

Is this how Keith felt? In a way, Shiro was there, with Black chose Keith. Part of him heard Keith’s protests—the same words running through his mind right now. The same questions. 

A fresh wall of guilt hits him, pulling a gasp from him, and most of it isn’t even his own. But he knows why now. 

_ You tried to save her… _

Images of Trigel and Pidge. Trigel, too far away for Green to even try when she died. Pidge...Green tried. She tried, but she was too weak from damage and the lions’ depleted cores. She couldn't do the same for Pidge that Black did for Shiro. 

But she tried.

_ We are not so different, either, _ Green is telling him. 

Maybe they need each other. 


End file.
